“People don’t like wearing things on their faces and don’t trust those who do.”
Neal Stephenson didn’t invent the virtual reality headset. However, Meta knows his name well. In 1992, his influential cyberpunk novel Snow Crash introduced the term “Metaverse” for a virtual reality world accessed through VR goggles. This concept inspired many key VR developers. In 2021, Facebook rebranded to Meta, aiming to pursue that Metaverse dream.
Now, Stephenson no longer views face-worn devices as the future. He finds Meta’s glasses unsettling: “People don’t like wearing things on their faces and don’t trust those who do.” He believes headsets have lost their potential in a phone-dominated world: “There is no business case for headsets any more.”
Reflecting on his previous beliefs, Stephenson shared: When working at Magic Leap, I challenged whether in twenty years, people would still be fixated on handheld devices. It seemed clear to me then that they wouldn’t. But I’ve reconsidered. In twenty years, handheld devices will still prevail unless the alternative remains face-worn tech.
Shrinking headsets to glasses size won’t suffice if they remain unsettling.
In his blog post, Stephenson seems to concur with Meta, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, and possibly Google, that the “Metaverse” doesn’t need to focus on VR. It could include simpler flat games. It’s convenient for these companies that the man who coined “Metaverse” doesn’t oppose their usage of the term.
However, it might be disappointing that he finds the hardware unsettling.